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August 10, 1990: Magellan enters orbit around Venus. Over the next four years, it maps 98 percent of the planet’s surface.

October 6, 1990: The U.S. – European Ulysses spacecraft launches a mission to study the Sun and its poles.

October 29, 1991: En route to Jupiter, Galileo makes the first flyby of an asteroid when it passes by Gaspra.

August 10, 1992: The U.S. – French ocean-monitoring satellite Topex/ Poseidon launches.

August 28, 1993: Galileo flies by a second asteroid, Ida, on its way to Jupiter.

December 2, 1993: Shuttle astronauts take a spacewalk to install JPL’s Wide-Field and Planetary Camera 2 in the Hubble Space telescope, compensating for a flaw in the telescope’s main mirror. The instrument allows Hubble to capture remarkable images of galaxies, nebula, planets, and many other celestial objects.

April 9, 1994: A decade after the first shuttle radar imaging mission, the third in the series launches. A JPL instrument is combined with a German-Italian radar system.

February 12, 1997: JPL teams with a Japanese spacecraft launched under the Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry program to make radio observations of the distant Universe.

July 4, 1997: Mars Pathfinder lands, delivering the first mobile rover to another planet, By the final data transmission on September 27, the mission returns 2.3 billion bits of information, including more than 16,500 lander images and 550 rover images.

September 12, 1997: Mars Global Surveyor enters orbit.

October 15, 1997: Cassini launches to travel 6-1/2 years to Saturn, where the European-built Huygens probe will descend to the surface of the shrouded moon Titan.

February 17, 1998: Voyager 1 passes another spacecraft to become the most distant human-made object in space.

October 24, 1998: Deep Space 1 launches on a mission to flight-test advanced technologies, including an ion propulsion system.

February 7, 1999: Stardust launches on a mission to fly past a comet and return samples of comet and interstellar dust to Earth.

June 19, 1999: The Quick Scatterometer satellite launches into Earth orbit to study near-surface ocean winds around the globe.

December 14, 2009: Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer launches. It will scan the sky in infrared light, creating a vast catalog of celestial objects.

May 20, 2010: The Mars Exploration Rover project passes a historic longevity record: “Opportunity” rover surpasses the duration record set by the Viking 1 lander of 6 years and 116 days operating on the Martian surface.

September 27, 2010: Cassini begins its second extended mission, named the Cassini Solstice Mission.

November 1, 2010: The giant 70-meter (230-foot) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications goes back on line tracking deep space missions after a seven-month upgrade.

November 4, 2010: Deep Impact-EPOXI flies by comet Hartley 2.

December 25, 2010: Mars Odyssey becomes the longest-serving spacecraft at Mars – 3,340 days in orbit.

August 27, 1962: Mariner 2 launches and conducts the first flyby of another planet when it visits Venus on December 14.

July 28, 1964: Ranger 7 launches and executes an intentional crash-landing into the Moon on July 31. As it closes in, it sends back more than 4,000 pictures of the lunar surface.

November 28, 1964: Mariner 4 launches with a destination of Mars.

February 17, 1965: Ranger 8 launches and impacts the Moon in Mare Tranquillitatis three days later. This location will become the landing spot for the Apollo 11 astronauts 4-1/2 years later.

March 21, 1965: Ranger 9 launches and three days later impacts the Moon in the 108-kilometer-diameter (67-mile) crater Alphonsus, sending back more than 5,800 images.

July 14, 1965: After an eight-month voyage to Mars, Mariner 4 makes the first flyby of the red planet. The spacecraft radios back the first close-up photos of another planet.

May 30, 1966: Surveyor 1 launches. On June 2, it becomes the first U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon.

April 17, 1967: Surveyor 3 launches, lading on the Moon on April 20. Two and a half years later, the Apollo 12 astronauts will land nearby and photograph the Surveyor 3 site.

June 14, 1967: Mariner 5 launches and flies by Venus on October 19.

September 8, 1967: Surveyor 5 launches and lands on the Moon September 11.

November 7, 1967: Surveyor 6 launches and soft-lands on November 10. The lunar mission runs until December 14.

January 7, 1968: Surveyor 7, the last of the Surveyor series, launches and soft-lands on the Moon on November 9. Overall, the Surveyors acquire 90,000 images from five sites on the Moon.

February 24, 1969: Mariner 6 launches. A month later, on March 27, Mariner 7 launches. They complete the first dual mission to Mars with flybys on July 3 and August 5.

May 30, 1971: Mariner 9 launches and reaches Mars on November 13, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. The craft operates for nearly a year around Mars.

November 3, 1973: Mariner 10 launches on a mission to Mercury and Venus, the first craft designed to visit two planets.

February 5, 1974: Using gravity-assist for the first time, Mariner 10 swings by Venus to borrow the planet’s gravity to propel it on to Mercury, which it passes on March 29. On September 21, it flies past Mercury again.

March 16, 1975: Mariner 19 flies by Mercury a third time.

August 20, 1975: Viking 1 launches an orbiter and lander toward Mars. On September 9, Viking 2 launches a similar orbiter- lander pair.

June 19, 1976: Viking 1 arrives in orbit at Mars. On July 20, its lander becomes the first craft to soft-land on another planet. On August 7, Viking 2 arrives in orbit, and its lander touches down on September 3.

August 20, 1977: Voyager 2 launches, followed by the launch of Voyager 1 on September 5.

June 26, 1978: The experimental Seasat satellite launches to test four instruments that use radar to study Earth and its seas. The satellite collected more ocean topography data than the previous 100 years of shipboard research.

March 5, 1979: Voyager 1 makes its closest approach to Jupiter. On July 9, Voyager 2 flies by the giant planet. Together, the Voyagers take more than 22,000 images of Jupiter and its moons.

November 12, 1980: Voyager 1 flies by Saturn.

August 25, 1981: Voyager 3 flies by Saturn.

October 6, 1981: The Solar Mesosphere Explorer launches to study processes that create and destroy ozone in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

November 12, 1981: The first in a series of radar imagers is launched on the space shuttle.

Meteoroids are debris in space from comets or asteroids; meteors are shooting stars or fire balls in air; meteorites are meteoroids that invade Earth’s atmosphere and impact the ground; micrometeorites are perfect shiny spheres microscopic in size and the major cause of small-scale erosion on the moon. The three major types of meteoroids are stony, stony iron, and iron.

Several meteors can be seen per hour on any given night; when this number increases dramatically, these events are called “meteor showers” that occur annually or at regular intervals as the Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left by a comet

The Perseids peak around August 12 every year; each Perseid meteor part of the comet Swift-Tuttle that swings around the Sun every 135 years

Other meteor showers and their associated comets: Leonids (Tempe-Tuttle), the Aquarids and Orionids (Halley), and the Taurids (Encke)

Comet dust in meteor showers burns up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground

Most meteorites no bigger than an average Earth rock

Large meteorites can cause extensive destruction: Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona (1,000 meters, 50,000 years old), asteroid impact which created the 300 km Chicxulub crater on Yucatan Peninsula (65 million years ago)

Ann Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama was severely bruised by a 3.6 kilogram stony meteorite that crashed through her roof in November, 1954

Meteorites have a “burned” exterior, formed as the meteorite is melted by friction as it passes through the atmosphere

Three types of meteorites: “irons,” “stones,” “stony-irons”

More than 30,000 meteorites found on Earth, 99.8% came from asteroids

Evidence for an asteroid origin includes: orbits calculated from photographic observations of meteorite falls project back to the asteroid belt, spectra of several classes of meteorites match those of some asteroid classes

All but rare lunar and Martian meteorites are very old, 4.5-4.6 million years

Only one group of meteorites can be traced to a specific asteroid; eucrite, diogenite, and howardite igneous meteorites traced to third largest asteroid Vesta

Meteorites and asteroids that fall on Earth are of the original diverse materials from which planets formed; tells the conditions and processes during the formation and earliest history of the solar system

Remaining 0.2% of meteorites split equally between meteorites from the Moon and Mars

35 known Martian meteorites blasted off Mars by meteoroid impacts; all igneous rocks crystallized by magma

350 B.C. (Athens, Greece) [Aristotle]– model of the solar system: spherical universe centered on solid spherical Earth (geocentric view); moon between Earth and Sun; all objects are from the four elements – earth, water, fire, and air; earth and heaven to be subject to two different sets of laws

310-250 B.C. [Aristarchus of Samos] – relative distances and sizes of the Moon and the Sun; Sun at the center of the solar system (heliocentric view); used Earth’s shadow to measure the size of the moon

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Astronomy: To Infinity and Beyond! Welcome to "The Cosmos." I will take you on a journey through our solar system, galaxy, and the Universe! You will be updated with current events in astronomy. Please click on the picture above to visit my blog on poetry, writings, and musings!

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References for photos used from websites can be found under the "References" page. Photo credit: news sites (reference included in post), NASA (most images used), and Google (for artists' view of objects unable to be photographed).